Off on a Comet

Chapter VII

In which Ben Zoof believes the Governor General to be negligent in
his duty towards him

Ten minutes later the governor general and his
“population” were asleep. The gourbi being in ruins, they were obliged to
put up with the best accommodation they could find in the adjacent
erection. The truth is that the captain’s slumbers were by no means
sound; he was agitated by the consciousness that he had hitherto been
unable to account for his strange experiences by any reasonable theory.
Though far from being advanced in the knowledge of natural philosophy, he
had been instructed, to a certain degree, in its elementary principles;
and, by an effort of memory, he managed to recall some general laws which
he had almost forgotten. He could understand that an altered inclination
of the Earth’s axis with regard to the ecliptic would introduce a change
of position in the cardinal points, and bring about a displacement of the
sea; but the hypothesis entirely failed to account, either for the
shortening of the days, or for the diminution in the pressure of the
atmosphere. He felt that his judgment was utterly baffled; his only
remaining hope was that the chain of marvels was not yet complete, and
that something farther might throw some light upon the mystery.

The following morning Ben Zoof’s first care was to provide a good
breakfast. To use his own phrase, he was as hungry as the whole
population of three million Algerians, of whom he was the representative,
and he must have enough to eat. The catastrophe which had overwhelmed the
country had left a dozen eggs uninjured, and upon these, with a good dish
of his famous couscous, he hoped that he and his master might have a
sufficiently substantial meal. The stove was ready for use, the copper
skillet was as bright as hands could make it, and the beads of condensed
steam upon the surface of a large stone al-caraza gave evidence that it
was supplied with water. Ben Zoof at once lighted a fire, singing all the
time, according to his wont, a snatch of an old military refrain.

A salty meal
A piece of veal
A dixie-tin
To stew it in.

Ever on the lookout for fresh phenomena, Captain Servadac watched the
preparations with a curious eye. It struck him that perhaps the air, in
its strangely modified condition, would fail to supply sufficient oxygen,
and that the stove, in consequence, might not work. But no; the fire was
lighted just as usual, and fanned into vigour by Ben Zoof applying his
mouth in lieu of bellows, and a bright flame started up from the midst of
the twigs and coal. The skillet was duly set upon the stove, and Ben Zoof
was prepared to wait awhile for the water to boil. Taking up the eggs, he
was surprised to notice that they hardly weighed more than they would if
they had been mere shells; but he was still more surprised when he saw
that before the water had been two minutes over the fire it was at full
boil.

“The devil!” he exclaimed, “a precious hot fire!”

Servadac reflected. “It cannot be that the fire is hotter,” he said, “the
peculiarity must be in the water.” And taking down a centigrade
thermometer, which hung upon the wall, he plunged it into the skillet.

The instrument registered no more than 66 degrees.

“Take my advice, Ben Zoof,” he said; “leave your eggs in the saucepan a
good quarter of an hour.”

“Boil them hard! That will never do,” objected the orderly.

“You will not find them hard, my good fellow. Trust me, we shall be able
to dip our bread into the yolks easily enough.”

The captain was quite right in his conjecture, that this new phenomenon
was caused by a diminution in the pressure of the atmosphere. Water
boiling at a temperature of 66 degrees was itself an evidence that the
column of air above the Earth’s surface had become reduced by one-third
of its altitude. The identical phenomenon would have occurred at the
summit of a mountain 35,000 feet high; and had Servadac been in
possession of a barometer, he would have immediately discovered the fact
that only now for the first time, as the result of experiment, revealed
itself to him—a fact, moreover, which accounted for the compression of
the blood-vessels which both he and Ben Zoof had experienced, as well as
for the attenuation of their voices and their accelerated breathing. “And
yet,” he argued with himself, “it’s hard to believe that our encampment
has been projected to so great an elevation. For how is it that the sea
remains at its proper level?”

Once again Hector Servadac, though capable of tracing consequences, felt
himself totally at a loss to comprehend their cause, Inde irae.

After their prolonged immersion in the boiling water, the eggs were found
to be only just sufficiently cooked; the couscous was very much in the
same condition; and Ben Zoof came to the conclusion that in future he
must be careful to commence his culinary operations an hour earlier. He
was rejoiced at last to help his master, who, in spite of his perplexed
preoccupation, seemed to have a very fair appetite for breakfast.

“Well, captain?” said Ben Zoof presently, such being his ordinary way of
opening conversation.

“Well, Ben Zoof?” was the captain’s invariable response to his servant’s
formula.

“What are we to do now, sir?”

“We must wait.”

“Wait?”

“Until somebody rescues us.”

“By sea?”

“Certainly, by sea, since we are now encamped upon an island.”

“But do you suppose that any of our friends are still alive?” asked Ben
Zoof.

“Oh, I think we must indulge the hope that this catastrophe has not
extended very far. We must trust that it has limited its mischief to some
small portion of the Algerian coast, and that our friends are all alive
and well.”

“Yes, captain. We mustn’t give up hope.”

“No doubt the governor general will be anxious to investigate the full
extent of the damage, and will send a vessel from Algiers to explore. It
is not likely that we shall be forgotten. What, then, you have to do, Ben
Zoof, is to keep a sharp lookout, and to be ready, in case a vessel
should appear, to make signals at once.”

“But if no vessel should appear!” sighed the orderly.

“Then we must build a boat, and go in search of those who do not come in
search of us.”

“Very good. And how good are your sea legs?”

“Everyone can be a sailor when he must,” said Servadac calmly.

Ben Zoof said no more. For several succeeding days he scanned the horizon
unintermittently with his telescope. His watching was in vain. No ship
appeared upon the desert sea. “By the name of a Kabyle!” he broke out
impatiently, “his Excellency is grossly negligent!”

Although the days and nights had become reduced from twenty-four hours to
twelve, Captain Servadac would not accept the new condition of things,
but resolved to adhere to the computations of the old calendar.
Notwithstanding, therefore, that the sun had risen and set twelve times
since the commencement of the new year, he persisted in calling the
following day the 6th of January. His watch enabled him to keep an
accurate account of the passing hours.

In the course of his life, Ben Zoof had read a few books. After pondering
one day, he said: “It seems to me, captain, that you have turned into
Robinson Crusoe, and that I am your man Friday. Have I turned into a
negro.”

“No,” replied the captain. “You’re still white. A dark sort of white, but
still.”

The 6th of January passed with no ship appearing; and Captain Servadac,
after the example of all previous Robinson Crusoes, began to consider it
advisable to investigate the resources of his domain. The new territory
of which he had become the monarch he named Gourbi Island. It had a
superficial area of about nine hundred square miles. Bullocks, cows,
goats, and sheep existed in considerable numbers; and as there seemed
already to be an abundance of game, it was hardly likely that a future
supply would fail them. The condition of the cereals was such as to
promise a fine ingathering of wheat, maize, and rice; so that for the
governor and his population, with their two horses, not only was there
ample provision, but even if other human inhabitants besides themselves
should yet be discovered, there was not the remotest prospect of any of
them perishing by starvation.

From the 6th the 13th of January the rain came down in torrents; and,
what was quite an unusual occurrence at this season of the year, several
heavy storms broke over the island. In spite, however, of the continual
downfall, the heavens still remained veiled in cloud. Servadac, moreover,
did not fail to observe that for the season the temperature was unusually
high; and, as a matter still more surprising, that it kept steadily
increasing, as though the Earth were gradually and continuously
approaching to the sun. In proportion to the rise of temperature, the
light also assumed greater intensity; and if it had not been for the
screen of vapor interposed between the sky and the island, the
irradiation which would have illumined all terrestrial objects would have
been vivid beyond all precedent.

But neither sun, moon, nor star ever appeared; and Servadac’s irritation
and annoyance at being unable to identify any one point of the firmament
may be more readily imagined than described. On one occasion Ben Zoof
endeavoured to mitigate his master’s impatience by exhorting him to
assume the resignation, even if he did not feel the indifference, which
he himself experienced; but his advice was received with so angry a
rebuff that he retired in all haste, abashed, to resume his watchman’s
duty, which he performed with exemplary perseverance. Day and night, with
the shortest possible intervals of rest, despite wind, rain, and storm,
he mounted guard upon the cliff—but all in vain. Not a speck appeared
upon the desolate horizon. To say the truth, no vessel could have stood
against the weather. The hurricane raged with tremendous fury, and the
waves rose to a height that seemed to defy calculation. Never, even in
the second era of creation, when, under the influence of internal heat,
the waters rose in vapor to descend in deluge back upon the world, could
meteorological phenomena have been developed with more impressive
intensity.

But by the night of the 13th the tempest appeared to have spent its fury;
the wind dropped; the rain ceased as if by a spell; and Servadac, who for
the last six days had confined himself to the shelter of his roof,
hastened to join Ben Zoof at his post upon the cliff. Now, he thought,
there might be a chance of solving his perplexity; perhaps now the huge
disc, of which he had had an imperfect glimpse on the night of the 31st
of December, might again reveal itself; at any rate, he hoped for an
opportunity of observing the constellations in a clear firmament above.

The night was magnificent. Not a cloud dimmed the lustre of the stars,
which spangled the heavens in surpassing brilliancy, and several nebulae
which hitherto no astronomer had been able to discern without the aid of
a telescope were clearly visible to the naked eye.

By a natural impulse, Servadac’s first thought was to observe the
position of the pole-star. It was in sight, but so near to the horizon as
to suggest the utter impossibility of its being any longer the central
pivot of the sidereal system; it occupied a position through which it was
out of the question that the axis of the Earth indefinitely prolonged
could ever pass. In his impression he was more thoroughly confirmed when,
an hour later, he noticed that the star had approached still nearer the
horizon, as though it had belonged to one of the zodiacal constellations.

The pole-star being manifestly thus displaced, it remained to be
discovered whether any other of the celestial bodies had become a fixed
centre around which the constellations made their apparent daily
revolutions. To the solution of this problem Servadac applied himself
with the most thoughtful diligence. After patient observation, he
satisfied himself that the required conditions were answered by a certain
star that was stationary not far from the horizon. This was Vega, in the
constellation Lyra, a star which, according to the precession of the
equinoxes, will take the place of our pole-star 12,000 years hence. The
most daring imagination could not suppose that a period of 12,000 years
had been crowded into the space of a fortnight.

“So,” observed the captain, “the logical conclusion is that the Earth’s
axis has been suddenly and immensely shifted. That axis, if we sketch it,
would pass through a point very little removed above the horizon. From
this I deduce that the Mediterranean must have been transported to the
equator.”

Lost in a bewildering maze of thought, he gazed long and intently upon
the heavens. His eyes wandered from where the tail of the Great Bear, now
a zodiacal constellation, was scarcely visible above the waters, to where
the stars of the southern hemisphere were just breaking on his view. A
cry from Ben Zoof recalled him to himself.

“The moon!” cried the orderly.

“The moon?”

“Yes, the moon!” replied Ben Zoof, as though overjoyed at once again
beholding what the poet called “the kind companion of terrestrial
night”. He pointed to a disc that was rising at a spot precisely
opposite the place where they would have expected to see the sun.

But Captain Servadac could not altogether enter into his servant’s
enthusiasm. If this were actually the moon, her distance from the Earth
must have been increased by some millions of miles. He was rather
disposed to suspect that it was not the Earth’s satellite at all, but
some planet with its apparent magnitude greatly enlarged by its
approximation to the Earth. Taking up the powerful field-glass which he
was accustomed to use in his surveying operations, he proceeded to
investigate more carefully the luminous orb. But he failed to trace any
of the lineaments, supposed to resemble a human face, that mark the lunar
surface; he failed to decipher any indications of hill and plain; nor
could he make out the aureole of light which emanates from what
astronomers have designated Mount Tycho.

“It is not the moon,” he said slowly.

“How do you mean it’s not the moon?” cried Ben Zoof, unwilling to
renounce his first impression.

“Because there is a small satellite in attendance.” And the captain drew
his servant’s attention to a bright speck, apparently about the size of
one of Jupiter’s satellites seen through a moderate telescope, that was
clearly visible just within the focus of his glass.

Here, then, was a fresh mystery. The orbit of this planet was assuredly
interior to the orbit of the Earth, because it accompanied the sun in its
apparent motion; yet it was neither Mercury nor Venus, because neither
one nor the other of these has any satellite at all.

The captain stamped and stamped again with mingled vexation, agitation,
and bewilderment. “Confound it!” he cried, “if this is neither Venus nor
Mercury, it must be the moon; but if it is the moon, whence, in the name
of all the gods, has she picked up another moon for herself?”